A little glimpse of Heaven

I had a great day yesterday.

I spent the day with Melody and Jane. We grew up together. We were babies together at old 1st church. We spent the nights at each other's homes. Melody and Jane went to the same college together, Jane and I lived together just before I got married. We have lots of memories together. Jane lives in Pennsylvania and comes home every summer. The last couple of nights she has stayed at Melody's.

Yesterday, after Melody's appointment, I went home with her and spent the rest of the day with my forever friends. Being female - we talked ALOT!!

Here are some of our topics.........

Husbands and marriage (between the 3 of us - we have over 60 years of marriage!)

Children (between the 3 of us - we have 11 children ranging in ages from 19 to 5!)

Jon and Kate plus 8

Music (we love the new Point of Grace song "How we live")

Home decorating

Cars (yes, I know that's a surprise since we are females!)

Our struggles

The time was getting late and I needed to drive almost an hour home and I hugged and said good-bye. As I was driving home, it dawned on me that my day was a glimpse of Heaven. We talked, laughed and didn't cry. There will be no tears in Heaven. Plus, we will spend eternity with the One who loved us so much to suffer for us so we can live.

Feeling Blue

Yes, I know it's been awhile since I posted. I wondered how well I was going to do with this blog.

There are 2 reasons why I haven't written.

When we moved into this house 8 years ago, I told Jerry I could live with the color and wallpaper for "awhile" but we would have to redo the entire main level of the house before the boys' graduation. They graduated last year.

The paint color was a light muddy brown and the wallpaper was horrid - GIANT pink and blue flowers!! Jerry has been a trooper! He has even taken 4 days of vacation. The wallpaper and border has been our greatest challenge. It took Jerry a day and a half just to get the border down in the family room and kitchen. Whoever put this wallpaper up had to spend a fortune on glue!

Now we have beautiful blue walls.......cool, relaxing, sky blue walls! I LOVE IT!!

We aren't quite done yet. We still need to take the wallpaper down in the stairway going upstairs to the bedrooms and paint the stairway and the upstairs landing.

I'm now enjoying 'redecorating' my home. We have rearranged some of the furniture and I'm putting things back on the walls. I even splurged and got a few new wall hangings.

Now for my 2nd reason for feeling blue.

My very dear friend of over 40 years was given news that no one ever wants to hear. She is a wife and busy mom of 4 (oldest going to college, youngest going to kindergarten and 2 in the middle) who was just feeling tired and and having trouble with anemia. (What mom isn't tired?)
Now she knows that she has ampulliary carcinoma stage 4 - an extremely rare cancer. Very little is written about this type of cancer and most of the written material is in the form of medical research. I spent an afternoon reading what I could find on the internet and found that 6 people out of a million have ampulliary carcinoma.

So, in the last couple of weeks, I have gone to her doctor's appointments and sat with her during a brief admission to St. Francis oncology unit. Her doctor's aren't very encouraging. I tell myself and I have told her we serve a God who isn't interested in human timetables and schedules. My friend is a great story teller and an incredible witness for our Savior. When we found out that she had a metastatic cancer just days before her daughter's graduation openhouse, I told her that God knows how well she puts words and stories together and he is going to use her for his glory.

We have shared many memories over the last 40 years - wedding attendants; children's birthday parties; camping; other day trips; LOTS of phone calls; just 5 months ago she sat with Jimmy in a Kalamazoo, MI emergency room after a snowboarding accident.

I want to share many more memories with my forever friend.